


N7 Hoodie

by bagog



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: M/M, Musing, POV Kaidan Alenko, Paragon Commander Shepard, Post-Ending, Short, cloth...?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-22
Updated: 2015-01-22
Packaged: 2018-03-08 14:40:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3212861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bagog/pseuds/bagog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kaidan has begun sorting through Shepard's things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	N7 Hoodie

Stupid old hoodie.

Look at this thing: the elastic in the cuffs is shot. The hood’s fraying, so are the seams on the shoulder. The zipper always gets stuck half-way up. I never noticed how many holes were in this thing, the lining’s practically falling out. The tear in the pocket from that night at his apartment… he was in such a rush to get it off, heh. Our first actual date. I wasn’t there when a lot of these rips were made… Stupid old hoodie.

Huh... the N7 embroidery is fraying. I guess I figured that if it’s the only designation you can wear on clothes, the Alliance would spring for better materials. It’s been washed too many times to really call it black anymore. The red doesn’t look red. The white isn’t white. And it smells like Shepard.

Even underneath the scent of that Krogan noodle-house on the Strip, the gun lubricant, and that whiskey he spilled all over himself the night before—well. Even under all that, all those memories, Shepard’s still there. I wonder for how much longer. 

That first night, I laid in our bed with that stupid hoodie. Woke up in the middle of the night, that… that scent around me, like I was right up against the back of Shepard’s neck again, y’know? But the bed was cold. How long till the smell of the closet or my own sweaty palms takes him away from me… takes that scent, I mean. Am I gonna breathe all of Shepard out of this hoodie? 

How long has… did… Shepard have this hoodie? Years, I guess. I wanna believe that it’ll remember him for at least that long—but that’s not how it works, I know. How long did Shepard and I have? Really have? Months? Weeks? How could I have missed all these rips? 

I wanna put it away. Hide it. Seal it up somewhere. Save it for myself. That’s not how it works either though, huh? This stupid goddamn hoodie. It’s sorta all he had, all these years. It’s been there with him since the beginning, through the good times and the hard times, through everything… 

I’m… uh… I’m gonna keep it, I guess. I think sometime, years from now, I’ll bring it out and maybe somehow, just a little, Shepard’s scent will come back.

He’s never going to, though, huh?

**Author's Note:**

> This started life as a character description on m'Tumblr which is all about playing with character descriptions. I was trying to describe a relationship through a man's jacket. Been feeling many feels about my OTP lately though, so rewrote the whole thing to be an MShenko shorty short. Turned on "I'm Proud of You" and wrote it up. Hey, thanks for reading!


End file.
